Jesus Suarez-Garcia

Professor Suarez-Garcia honestly exceeded my expectations for this course! Whether you have minimal prior experience or none at all, this class is amazing. From day one, Prof was very forgiving of mistakes and open to any questions. He would be more "bothered" by the fact that you apologized for making a mistake than the mistake itself lol. Genuinely nice guy and great professor, I couldn't recommend him more.

Professor Suarez-Garcia is a spiteful prick who does not want to see you succeed. He gets off on having something to teach you as a weird power dynamic, so if you go into this class with prior knowledge of Spanish (which is literally a requirement) he will punish you for your natural success since its not the fruit of his own labors. His grading is entirely subjective, giving better grades on things like presentations and writing assignments to the worst Spanish speakers of the class. He literally broke the syllabus rules to award a good student less points because "you can't achieve a perfect score." forget about ever earning an A+ in this class. If you do the work, you'll get an A, so his policies don't affect your actual end grade so much. But its the principle! if you're supposed to end the course at a 98.7% there's zero reason he should be able to lower that to a 95.4% just because he doesn't like you. He very obviously plays favorites and its with the most helpless students who don't know shit about Spanish.

Jesus really cares about his students and their success. He really tries to make sure the classroom is an open space where students feel comfortable making mistakes, which is really nice. That being said, there is a TON of work for this class and he is a pretty harsh grader. If you don't participate you won't do well and sometimes there was so much work that people just gave up. It is definitely a lot harder than Int. Span II so be prepared. I did learn a lot about intercultural communication so that was really cool and he's a good teacher, it's just a challenging course.

Professor Suarez-Garcia deserves a gold nugget. I had the pleasure of taking him this past semester, and the man was absolutely amazing. He truly cares about his job and does everything in his power to help all of his students master the language. He is always available to speak outside of class...and does more than most teachers will do for a student. Can't remember a teacher who was this good at his job. Anyway, if you care about your grade...you'll get a good one. I'm sure most people in the class had a grade in the A-range (I got an A+).

Jesus is one of the best teachers I've ever had. He is extremely compassionate and enthusiastic. He puts everything he can into his work, and it is extremely admirable. The class is not difficult, but do not take it with him if you do not intend to put in any effort. He deserves better students.

PChem was as expected a difficult course. The problem sets were difficult and time consuming (the 2nd one in particular !). Min is a pretty good professor and tries to make the class interactive- however he didn't seem to have a good feel on what was difficult vs easy for the students- the result was that some exam problems were virtually impossible ( he had to make one of the problems on the first midterm a bonus question). The practice exam he gave for the first exam was way easier than the actual first exam. The material was interesting though and for most people it was required for their major. To succeed work in a group for the psets (they were worth 35% so do well in them) study like crazy for the exams and hope that you immediately "see" the solution for the exam problems....it's almost guaranteed for some you won't and you'll end up calculating randomly and hoping for partial credit though ( he gives good partial credit). If you've taken differential equations and have a good calc background things will probably be a bit easier but you can get by if not just get the basic calc stuff down. Just ensure you do well on the psets they are worth a lot. The first midterm was harder than the second..,,the exam was probably in between in difficulty closer to the first.

In short, he is amazing! People at this school seem to think if you speak Spanish at home then you really don't "speak" Spanish. You will not run into those people in this class since everyone is a native speaker (this is so nice). Even though Jesus is from Spain, he does not criticize your accent if you are from Latin America, in fact he told us many times that we spoke perfectly. Not only was he supportive of our unique struggles as native speakers with spelling and accents, he was supportive when people had illnesses and/or personal problems. The daily assignments did not interfere with other work for more challenging classes. The homework was easy, interesting, and helpful at looking and understanding our problems in our own lands. Take this course! If you are not a native speaker take one of his other courses, he is wonderful!

I'm surprised he doesn't have more recent reviews. Professor Suarez-Garcia was my teacher for Elementary Spanish I last semester. I didn't realize how fortunate I was until Elementary II; my current professor is great but here's what makes Professor Suarez-Garcia stand out: 1) He's a very experienced teacher, so no matter how bungled your Spanish phrasing is, he actually understands what you're trying to say and gently corrects and helps you. Additionally, his English is also very good, so at least for my class, he always knew the Spanish translation for any English word we asked about. 2) I don't know if this is common for Elementary I, but he conducts his classes entirely in Spanish, except for the first day when he explains the syllabus. Though this was quite intimidating at first, it's extremely helpful. And I doubt it's easy to do, considering he had to repeat and rephrase things a lot for us. 3) He is incredibly encouraging. He'll be sure to praise you for your struggles throughout class, and he is actually sincere about it. This aspect may not seem that important, but particularly for beginners, it can really benefit your mindset towards Spanish. 4) On the first day of class, he said that he wouldn't make us participate, but he actually does--this is good because you end up with a lot of practice, which is helpful for the exams. I highly recommend Professor Suarez-Garci…

Jesus was a kind, understanding, and patient professor. He was very open to questions and willing to re-explain topics we were confused on. He also made class a very comfortable space where mistakes were welcome and learned from.

Spanish Intermediate I with Prof. Jesús Suárez-García have been a very positive experience. I wholeheartedly recommend taking any Spanish course with this professor. He has brought much enthusiasm to each class and kept our class engaged while encouraging participation even if students make minor grammatical or pronunciation mistakes. Compositions have opportunities for revision, and there are practice tests which are beneficial in preparation for midterms and finals.